Merkel’s Cabinet moves to scrap state funding for extreme right party

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet will submit a petition to the country’s highest court, seeking to cut public funding to the extreme right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), the government announced Wednesday.

The petition will ask the Federal Constitutional Court to deny the NPD funding on the basis that it is an “anti-constitutional” party.

“We cannot and do not want to accept that a party that opposes our free democratic basic order receives benefits from state party funding,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said in a statement.

The deputy chair of Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, Stephan Harbarth, said the parties would push to have the German parliament also file a petition against the NPD.

German law stipulates that all political parties that receive at least 0.5 percent of the vote in national and EU elections can get public money. In 2017, the NPD received around €850,000.

Support for the NPD has waned in recent years, especially as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has grown in popularity, winning its first seats in the Bundestag in last year’s election. The NPD’s share of the vote fell from 1.3 percent in the 2013 national election to 0.4 percent in last September’s vote.

The Cabinet’s decision also comes at a time when the government is attempting to take a stand against reports of increased anti-Semitism. The Bundestag voted in January to create a new commissioner position to combat discrimination against the Jewish community, and Merkel’s conservatives proposed that same month deporting anti-Semitic migrants.

“One cannot constantly complain about the growing anti-Semitism in Germany and finance programs to fight anti-Semitism, and then support a party that, according to findings of the constitutional court, is similar in nature to the Nazis, with around €1 million a year,” Harbarth said in a statement. “Each cent that the NPD gets from the state is a cent too much.”

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Darius Na

Hmmm, if political parties that receive at least 0.5 percent of the vote in national and EU elections can get public money, and NPD got 0.4 percent in last September’s vote, that would mean it’s public funding would be automatically cut off anyway, without this ridiculous, hypocritical posturing by people, who just spent 7 months in political maneuvering to thwart the democratic will of the voters and keep the previous corrupt coalition in power.